Being In Time

Iron forged to place
Burnished molds hardened
Burned all dross and waste
So the statue stood.

But culminates
To here where it melts
By no built fate
But now in my hands

Its forward image
Points how it would return
If such and such arranged,
So I might again transform.




Author's Note:
Heidegger's right about everything as far as I can tell. But he inserts his concepts into temporality--Background familiarity/coping is the past, ready-to-hand the present, and for-the-sake-of-which the future--but I think there's more to the structure of time than that. So I thought writing the above would help flesh out what the structure of time was--it didn't. I don't want to be a philosopher; I'd have to start a new blog, and poems should make such mental realities open up. Heidegger himself said as much. So I just need to make better poems. That's it.

More Masks

Enlighten me, books!
Don me more disguises
If arteries won't contract
And breath stop
At every role performed.

The President's Toking

The President's toking applause
Unsure how it'll affect him,
Heads shift into a mirage
Of desert sands shelled by grins.
Diamond teeth and wide jewls
--Those same lobbed down Wallstreet,
Stare firm like banks' fineprint rules
That grab shop, State, and grain replete.

Resticitive sleaves can't keep
From turning like bailed-out crank shafts,
Dripping hair sweat to feet
And misaligning sugical grafts.

Oven mouths raise bread
In reved-up breaths, baking banners,
The podium, its seal blushed red,
Rewrought by one-sounded hammers,
"My fellow Americans
. . . etc. " Plying over and over,
Between the typical phrasings
And the rest of those prime movers.

Why take it in? No, 'cause,
Inhale and watch the room spin
With the President toking applause
Unsure how it'll affect him.

The Old Waterfall

I.

Stay indoors
when waterfall lines
can't complete
the thought

can't
compete
with iron
mind

immovable

waterfall lines
trickle
in the sun
of this bored day

so bored is boring day
bored in dirt
bored a hole

it's enough to
take the time
breathe
prepare
and see
yet again

more broke lines
trickling as a
waterfall

II.

October waterfall
shining at
the boring sun
and boring lines
in dirt

the water
of the heart

not heart

but
the water of this
novelty
is October
the last trickling
drops
after the monsoon
before powder

fresh
white powder
that makes wave
white rapids
waving

at sun

to send a flowing
fall soon

to send
fluids
breaking iron
mind
will bend in fluid
mind
with less breaks
in lines

after this death
after agonized faces
run boring

day
the only
day

that would breathe
prepare
and see
lines
broke in place
where jewls
claim
they're found

here

in this break

tricks
trickling
trickle

tricks

III.

A convention center rusts below. It's goers shift and walk slowly before the dying fall. Agony presses these squinting eyes and furrowed brows that tell themselves to go on, on to the top, despite obvious pressure. Along the side of the trail, some cross their legs teary-eyed keeping it in, and dance a crooked dance before completing their ascent. The final leg is littered with prune juice containers and dried fruit bags. These agonized faces face relief just up . . . .
Those already making their runs say a prayer and give thanks for what is running so faintly, so vaguley. With ears pressed down to the rock, they hear its radiance whispering, "you can do it, you can save. Keep me going."
And for the sake of this dying fall, for the sake of all those decades past when they witnessed its spraying magnificence, a foreman on top signals though his megaphone
"Go! Let loose! keep it running!"
The squating conventioners ring their music through the cliffs, trickling faint gifts of life. Reems await their turn to make those same sweet sombre tones, to remember, to dream.
Oh, but it dies despite! And I hear the convention center isn't keeping up its dues. Yet on they march. On they go along steep trails in agonized faces, longing for their flowing fall, waving white to the sun.

Kill Me Hardly

Puss Princesses
& Pansy Princes
Are getting sentimental

Are writing poetry

overanalyzing
Looking
To shit styles in piss

Make too many words
Say nothing
Make too many words
Avoid transitions
prepositions

Comment on the art
Want art

Stupid

Fragments

We're writing stuff so meaningful
That when you don't see it you aren't meaningful, go away.

It's the world of stabbing eyes
Shooting energies
Killing
Bitch worlds
When energy's there,
To mold our own vision for it,

Cracked turtles trailing blood.



Beneath the Autumn wood
You have sung me songs, clouds
Shown which path's truely good
Out of these wandering reams of crowds
That stab at Earth
For bits of worth.
Show them what you showed me, clouds?
Yeah well that's not my job
chit chat with individual wills as a mob,
...Oh but that's what you did say,
.............Above the darkened rain
Wandering wills are too much to contain
None know what each will do
This is the only thing that's true.

So did that do it, did I tell them okay, did I listen?
Fucken ell, can't I enjoy clouds without divine mission?

It's Time For a Drink (A Poem in Limericks)

There's nothing so great as feelings that sink
Cause then it's off with the lads for a drink,
I take up my shot
And brawl with the sots
The next day wond'ring ow come I can't think.

There's nothing so great as feelings that sink
Cause what's that? Yep, it's time for a drink.
It's only by the shot
I can fade 'way my lot
As the more I drink, the more lasses wink.

There's nothing so great as to pick up a drink
Bandy it about and wreck up a stink
Pissing a lot
With all that you got
Nothing so great voiding feelings that sink.

A Triolet and a Tanka

Horizons

Again I leave as malcontent
As slamming rotted window sills
That send up bugs dead, dust, and lint.
Again I leave as malcontent
A mutt who can't afford cheap rent
But send me stars, horizon!--'til
Again I'll leave as malcontent
As slamming rotted window sills.


Sunstroke

Red beams give a rash
To all these shriveled up rocks
Where trees stoop down low
And waves arise from asphalt,
Baking critters on the road.